The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee has filed a lawsuit against the Rutherford County Board of Education for banning or restricting over 145 books in the school library. The banned books addressed LGBTQ rights, race and racism. In a press release Wednesday, the ACLU of Tennessee called this action an “attack on an inclusive education.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three anonymous families and an organization supporting the free expression of writers, called PEN America. Thirty-two members of PEN America have had a total of 53 books banned or restricted by the Rutherford County school board. The families include two rising freshmen and one rising senior who will be attending school in Rutherford County next year.
“The First Amendment is a crucial pillar of our country’s democracy,” ACLU of Tennessee’s Legal Director Stella Yarbrough said in a statement. “As these baseless bans continued to escalate, we had no choice but to go to court to defend authors’ free speech and students’ freedom to learn.”
The Rutherford County school board began banning books in the spring of 2024 at the request of school board members. This was done without any public meeting or vote. In September 2024, board members admitted to not reading the books that they were banning. Rather, they relied on ratings from a website created by people associated with the conservative group, Moms for Liberty. The website poorly rates books that include LGBTQ characters along with a “racial, social, or religious commentary” that the organization deemed controversial.
The board voted in November to have a committee of school library materials specialists review and report on the books. However, the board largely ignored those recommendations and removed books at nearly every meeting — many of which had been in school libraries for years.
One of the plaintiffs, a rising freshman, said that many of the banned books included the experiences of non-white authors growing up in America. She and the other plaintiffs are asking the court to stop Rutherford County from banning any more books in school libraries and reinstate many of the materials that were previously banned or restricted.
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